Recent advances in development of additively manufactured thermosets and fiber reinforced thermosetting composites: Technologies, materials, and mechanical properties

Additive manufacturing (AM) has a great potential to create complex parts and systems lighter and stronger compared to traditional manufacturing operations. So far, several polymeric materials including different types of thermoset polymers and recently fiber reinforced thermosetting composites have been used in different additive manufacturing processes. Printed parts have shown an enhanced performance compared to their counterparts made by conventional techniques. This review article presents the state-of-the-art in the field of polymer-based additive manufacturing processes employed for thermoset resins, their corresponding fiber reinforced composites, main process parameters, build strategies, and their effects on the mechanical behavior of printed parts. This paper enlightens the basics of material extrusion, vat photopolymerization, and hybrid AM processes. In particular, these techniques involve Direct Ink Writing (DIW), Frontal Polymerization (FP), Reactive Extrusion (RE), In-bath print and cure (IBPC) that fall under extrusion-based AM system, and Stereolithography (SLA), Digital Light Processing (DLP) falling under vat photopolymerization AM.